Extra Butter partners with adidas, PENSOLE Design Academy, and Make-A-Wish Foundation to launch Wish Kicks, a campaign with a goal to raise $90,000 to fund nine new wishes through the auction sale of footwear designed by former Make-A-Wish recipient and leukemia survivor, Tunav Nanda. Wish Kicks had been inspired by Nanda's story who was introduced to PENSOLE by Make-A-Wish in 2016 as his dream was to create his own shoe. This led to adidas sponsoring Nanda and producing the sneaker, called the BDA, representing the "Before, During, and After" of cancer and how it has affected his life experience.
We will be hosting an exclusive Wish Kicks talk panel and auction launch at Extra Butter on April 29th to commemorate Nanda and World Wish Day. Attendees will have the chance to view an immersive gallery experience depicting the three stages of Nanda's story, the "Before, During, and After" to showcase the power of positivity.
The three stories took their starting point from the above mentioned gathering on different inspiration sources. Revolving around the events in Tunav's life and the three stages of before, during and after cancer was transformed into "Untainted", "The Blur" and "Rebirth". The color of orange came to be the hero-color-story because this color has a lot of meaning in Tunav's life. The three stages also needed to be able to intertwine. At the same time not melt into one another. This distinction came to be one of the harder parts of creating the pair.
Developing the colorway into materials took some preparations of course. The main challenge was how to tell three stories and use as many of the different colors from the palette as the adidas team could within the design. The brand knew they had to go for a material and a technique that would give us the most color combinations to work with. Therefore they ended up settling on a heather-style knit for both laterals of the shoes, hereby creating space for having fun with different color-combos.
On both laterals you'll see a colorful heather-knit, each representing different times in Tunav's life. On the left side, there is "Untainted", the story representing the time before cancer. Here you'll see a use of complimentary colors, a way to resemble the playfulness and fun in this period of Tunav's life. The medials of both shoes are made from a dark blue leather. Representing "The Blur" and the time of cancer, a tough material like leather seemed fit along with the dark and subtle color. On both medials you'll see the adidas branding slightly vague. This branding is to be made from a thermo-sensitive material that lights up when struck by sunlight/heat. This way it will resemble Tunav's belief of staying positive and finding the light within dark times of ones life. Making this shoe, he wanted to inspire other children battling an illness and so this material with a transforming effect had the playfulness and surprising element that we wanted. The right lateral of the BDA sneakers is representing the story of "Rebirth". The colors are more subdued yet the colorway light evoking a sense of maturity and happiness at the same time.
For those who would like to bid on these exclusive sneakers in advance: Starting right now and running until May 3, Wish Kicks is offering a unique crowdfunding platform through Charitybuzz to raise money to grant wishes to nine kids suffering from life-threatening illnesses. Bids can be placed here.
We will be hosting an exclusive Wish Kicks talk panel and auction launch at Extra Butter Monday, April 29. Email RSVP@extrabutterny.com, limited engagement.
Source: Lotte Hahn Kofoed